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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943821">Travel through madness to find me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata'>Tabata</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Leoverse [189]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Glee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Descent into Madness, M/M, Pirates</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:01:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943821</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine is not himself anymore. Something followed him here from that ship, and it is haunting him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Blaine Anderson/Original Male Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Leoverse [189]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/30541</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Travel through madness to find me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>WARNING:</b> This story is an <b>AU</b> from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.<br/>In this instance of the universe, Blaine and Leo (and most of the others) are pirates. Also, Blaine is mad for reasons that you'll find out in this story.<br/>I hinted at this universe some time ago in one of Pete's story, but it didn't have a plot back then. Now it does.</p>
<p>written for: #COW-T10<br/>prompt: The madman</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The captain's quarters are a nice place to be when the sea is calm and there's not much to do except waiting for the next ship to board or the next adventure to come your way.</p>
<p>Talking about being a pirate, nobody ever says that there are these long periods of absolute nothing between raids. It's always an account of one battle after the other, of treasure islands, encounters with mermaids, ghost ships, and more than a good dose of filthy prisons.</p>
<p>When Leo decided to become a pirate – it wasn't really a conscious decision, but more of a consequence of him participating in his first boarding without knowing what it was going to entail for a fourteen year old deckhand of the Royal Navy – he expected to be constantly facing dangers and killing monsters, an adventurous life, like the ones he had read about in books. </p>
<p>The truth is, they spend more time just navigating than robbing anybody, but he must admit that he's only twenty two and he has seen his fair amount of monsters already. There's a bay in the South that's populated by mermaids and they pass by it often, 'cause the men obviously love the idea of kissing beautiful women with the side risk of being drowned. And he saw a Kraken once, well a piece of it at least. He saw ghosts too, but he never talks about that, because those are not nice stories to tell.</p>
<p>Despite the adventures and the busy life on a ship – that takes a lot from you but gives you twice as much, that is what they say – he loves the moments of quiet. He cherishes them because they never last. </p>
<p>As summoned by that very thought, Adam starts banging at the door, in that feverish way he always does it when his worry is about to turn into anger. “Leo, come out! Now!”</p>
<p>Adam is not supposed to speak to him like that – as he's second-in-command and, more often than not, captain ad interim too when it's needed – but he recently dropped formality with Adam, because they have other things to worry about. He closes the captain's log, which he keeps himself, because it's a duty that can't be skipped and Blaine sometimes forgets.</p>
<p>“I hope something caught fire for you to scream like that,” Leo says, opening the door. </p>
<p>“It's Blaine,” Adam only needs to say the name to give him a pretty clear idea of what's going on and how serious it is. “He was sitting at the bow, as he does every day, staring at the sea or something. One moment he was okay and then suddenly he went nuts. He started screaming and shouting nonsense, banging against the sides and everything. He almost destroyed the helm.”</p>
<p>Leo runs out of the cabin, his brain working twice as fast as it normally would, trying to calculate all the possibilities, all the outcomes of each and every possible scenarios. They never know when it is about to happen and they never know how bad it's going to be.  “What have you done to him?” He barks, passing through the crowd of his men that quickly opens up at his passage.</p>
<p>Nobody meets his eyes as he would read in theirs what they don't have the guts to say out loud.</p>
<p>“Nothing!” Adam answers for all of them, running after him. “Nobody said or did anything! Nobody touched him. We kept our distance as you said.”</p>
<p>When they get there, Blaine is standing at the bow, his back to them, and he's screaming at the open sea. “You will never get me! I'm tougher than you think! I will not surrender!”</p>
<p>He lost his coat somewhere and he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, showing whatever nightmares only his eyes can see the new tattoos he got a few days ago from Annie – words of power in circles around his right forearm and words of protection around his left –which are still shining bright on his tanned skin. He's surrounded by the devastation he caused. The deck is a mess of things thrown around and the wooden planks of the floor and sides are scratched deeply, by his nails, no doubt, and by his saber as well.</p>
<p>Leo didn't need to be here to know what happened because he was there the three times before today. He knows Blaine's brain snapped without warning, bringing him back to another place and time, that he clutched his head with both hands, trying to contain dreadful thoughts, and that he failed. He can see the traces of him stumbling all over deck, trying to find a way out of something that it is within him and it has been for months now.</p>
<p>Leo gestures Adam to stay back. He doesn't need to do the same with the others who make sure to be well away from Blaine at all times. Some of them do that out of superstition, others to keep themselves from doing what it needs to be done. Leo fears the latter more than the former, as you can always add one more amulet for those who believe in their power, but it's harder to stop someone who solves problems that scare them by killing them. He will have to address this situation, he knows that, but not now.</p>
<p>“Blaine?” He calls softly.</p>
<p>Blaine stops screaming at the air, but he doesn't turn around as if he wanted to be sure he really heard Leo's voice. So Leo takes another step forward. “It's me,” he says. </p>
<p>“Leo. Are you really here?” Blaine asks, lowering his eyes.</p>
<p>“Yes, I'm here. And you are too,” Leo adds. “We're on the <i>Prince</i> again, together.”</p>
<p>Blaine hesitates. Then, eventually, he turns around and his eyes fill with relief when they rest upon Leo's figure, standing juts a few feet away from him. His whole body relaxes as he lets go of tension and fear. “You're really here,” he says, this time with happiness.</p>
<p>Leo welcomes his painfully genuine smile with a forced one of his own. “Yes, babe, come here now.”</p>
<p>He reaches out for him and Blaine throws himself into his arms. His taller, wider frame wrapping around Leo with momentum. “They are back,” he whispers in Leo's ear. “They're everywhere.”</p>
<p>“No one is here except us and your crew,” Leo says patiently, as he leads him towards their quarters by the hand. Blaine seems to understand that he should keep quiet until they can put a door between them and the men and Leo is really grateful for that.</p>
<p>The ship plunges into an eerie silence. The men don't even whisper as Leo passes through them on his way back to the quarters. They look down or they look away – someone glares at Leo, but he ignores them. He doesn't have time for them now.</p>
<p>Once they're inside their cabin, he makes Blaine sit on the edge of the bed and kneels at his feet. “You're safe now,” he says. “You don't have to worry anymore.”</p>
<p>Blaine strokes his face gently, his hands made rough by years at sea. Leo is so used to it that he wouldn't even feel a softer touch. “They're here,” Blaine repeats, his voice gentler than his fingers on Leo's skin, but tired, so very tired. “You can't see them, kid, and I'm so grateful of that. But they're everywhere and they want me back.”</p>
<p>Leo holds Blaine's hand to his face as he kisses his lips and face over and over again, trying to lead him back from wherever he's gone, with his voice and his touch, anchoring him to the present with his own body. “They won't touch you,” he whispers to him. He knows whatever Blaine is seeing is not real, but he gave up on making him understand that nobody is here to hunt him. He just wants him to know he's safe. “I won't let anything bad happen to you, not ever again.”</p>
<p>Leo does everything he can not to think back to the moment this all started and he struggles even more not to dwell on the fact that what happened depends entirely on a decision he made. It's a crippling thought that doesn't help Blaine, and yet it's a deep wound inside of him that keeps bleeding and it's impossible to ignore.</p>
<p>Some time ago they came across a ship flying a pirate flag. It was a rundown galleon, just a little smaller than the <i>Prince of Persia</i>. She was just floating there, no man on deck. One of her masts was broken and the other tilted. The third was intact but it had no sail any longer. </p>
<p>They had circled the galleon for over an hour, trying to understand what had happened to her. No crew would leave a ship that has not sunken yet – at least the captain never would. An empty ship that's still floating has no reason to be abandoned, and most of the times it is not. If the crew still inside is alive or dead, that's another matter entirely.</p>
<p>A small group of them had decided to board the galleon and see this through. Blaine and Leo had both gone, which was the first of many mistakes that were done that day. Adam stayed on the <i>Prince</i>, with the order of keeping it ready to go, in case they needed it.</p>
<p>On the galleon the atmosphere was eerie. Matt had sensed something dark on it. “Something's not at peace,”  he had said. Leo could feel cold wind where the <i>Prince</i>'s sails were still and he didn't like that. The right thing to do – the reasonable one – would have been to leave the ship immediately, but either the ship was weirdly abandoned, and for that peculiarity she could still hide some treasure, or she was still manned, the crew was hiding and that meant she surely hid a treasure. Either way, it seemed worth a little scouting.</p>
<p>Leo knows now it wasn't.</p>
<p>A black fog started raising, faster and thicker than a normal fog. In a matter of seconds, their ship was nowhere to be seen. The only thing they could see was each other and only partially the deck of the rundown galleon. Blaine ordered them to stay close to each other, and they did for a while. But someone – something – attacked them from within the fog, and it separated them as easily as if they had never fought before.</p>
<p>Leo lost sight of Blaine last, but he lost him too.</p>
<p>It was the longest, scariest and bloodiest fight of his life and he fought it all by searching for Blaine frantically with his eyes, calling him over and over as he tried not to get killed by something he couldn't see nor hear. The only sounds were his own shouts and the screaming of the other pirates, the clanging of swords and, further away than it should have been, Adam's voice calling them.</p>
<p>At times the black fog would dissipate only to hurl out one of his mates dead on the deck. Leo realized he couldn't hope to come out alive from this if he stood still and he had thrown himself into the fog, searching for the side of the ship, trying to orientate himself. He started gathering the men one after the other, dragging them away from whatever was hanging to them with invisible claws and teeth.</p>
<p>He had found Blaine at the helm, the fog swirling around him furiously, but without touching him.</p>
<p>Blaine had turned to him. “Go!” He had said, and Leo had realized that whatever had been going on until now, it had stopped. The fog concentrated on the helm, on Blaine. He had shaken his head, of course. He wasn't going to leave him there for whatever reason.</p>
<p>“Get the others on the <i>Prince</i>, I'm right behind you,” Blaine had insisted, his voice hard. “Go, Leo! It's an order!”</p>
<p>And Leo had done as he was told. He decided to believe Blaine, knowing very well that was a lie. </p>
<p>The moment they had left the galleon, throwing themselves into the sea, the ghost ship had vanished, bringing Blaine with her.</p>
<p>It had taken eleven months to find her again. </p>
<p>Eleven months of research, of navigating uncharted seas. Eleven months of fighting with the crew, of convincing them – the ungrateful lot! – to come along in a possible suicide mission to save the man that had saved them. They thought he was dead, the bastards, or they were ready to let him die if he wasn't.</p>
<p>When they had found the ship again, and boarded her, and fought, Blaine was not himself anymore.</p>
<p>He was a broken thing that Leo is still piecing together. Whatever happened to him on that ship, Leo doesn't know because Blaine can't tell him. He's not always so confused, but his moments of complete clarity are getting shorter and shorter by the day. He's constantly confused as of the date and time, his thoughts are sometimes huddle and something followed him here from that ship, and it is haunting him.</p>
<p>“What are you thinking about, love?” Blaine sounds exhausted, but he also sounds himself again. Something shifts in his eyes, then, Leo can see the change in him. His boyfriend is coming back to the present, to them now in their cabin on the ship.</p>
<p>“Nothing,” Leo murmurs softly, pressing his face against the palm of his hand. “Are you feeling any better?”</p>
<p>“Drained,” Blaine sighs. “I'm sorry it happened again so soon.”</p>
<p>“It's not your fault.”</p>
<p>Blaine looks intently at him, this time. “Neither it's yours.”</p>
<p>Leo knows he's lying again, but this time he learned his lesson and he doesn't believe him.</p>
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